1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technique for controlling communication between a service providing apparatus on an external network and an image processing apparatus on an internal network.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, the addition of various functions to devices such as multifunction peripherals (MFPs) has been progressed and software-based processing such as image processing can be performed in such devices. However, the software-based processing largely affects the performance of other functions of the device, and installation and information setting procedures for using software are troublesome.
A system capable of requesting an application service provided by an application service server (hereinafter referred to as service server) on the Internet to perform high-load processing and processing of functions not included in a device has been discussed (for example, Japanese patent application Laid-Open No. 2004-088570).
In this case, the device requests an application service on the service server to perform specific processing, the application service being used by the device. In the event that a failure occurs, the device inquires of the service server or service application for when the failure is fixed or whether it has already been fixed. In this case, each individual device transmits a request to the application service on the Internet.
Therefore, the application service has to return an error message notifying the fact that a failure occurred to each individual device which transmitted the request. Thus, this configuration has an issue of excessive access and excessive communication on the Internet.